


Wits and valours, like great states

by acaramelmacchiato



Category: Rómeó és Júlia (Színház)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon, just some snark happy yuletide, literally nothing goes on
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 03:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaramelmacchiato/pseuds/acaramelmacchiato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tybalt and Mercutio at each other's throats forever and always and especially for Yuletide Madness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wits and valours, like great states

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



 

“Oh no,” said Mercutio, projecting his voice like an actor so Tybalt could hear him across the public square. “I didn’t know we were in _that sort_ of establishment.”

 

His friends, the Montague cousins and assorted hangers on who served no other purpose Tybalt could discern beyond laughing at Mercutio’s jokes, laughed at his joke.

 

“Say what you mean,” said Tybalt. A moment ago he had been engaged in very honest citizenship; trying only to pass from one side of the square to the other, to leave his aunt and to find his bed. He did not have patience generally to be waylaid, and he very specifically did not have the patience for Mercutio, who melted purposelessly out of the darkness and was in his path and was eye-crossingly annoying.

 

“You know,” Mercutio’s eyebrows were climbing at slightly different rates. He sketched out Tybalt’s shape in the air, and looked at the ground in a pantomime of embarrassment. “All that _leather_. In this season, in public. In general. It is too much, my friend, unless! Well. Refined taste, they say, is the strangest. Are you coming or going?”

 

Somehow, it had been ever thus.

 

He and Mercutio had never once met each other and behaved civilly, normally, or even politely, and though Mercutio himself was the chief and almost the exclusive architect of their enmity he did not seem to benefit from it at all.

 

Even when they were friendly they were mutually unkind.

 

“I am walking from there,” Tybalt said patiently and looked behind him, “to there,” and he faced forward.

 

Mercutio’s friends laughed at him, and a few of their voices lowered in conversation.

 

Mercutio himself was still laughing as he spoke: “And you think to do so without a fight? I’ve been waiting on you for a week. Tybalt. My friend. My dear. This is a joyful coincidence. I have been bored and there is only one cure. There have been moments in which I have almost succumbed. And I have said to everyone, save your trip to Gilead, seek out a man, taller than you think, mortifyingly humorless, dressed in black fetish gear, and bring him to me so we may insult each other, and I shall return to you; I shall be revived.”

 

“I will insult you happily if you then leave me alone,” said Tybalt. The sun was setting in his eyes, and when Mercutio moved to block it, it seemed that fire stuck to him like static. His jacket was red, and his hair was the usual.

 

“And why do you think anything is that easy?” when Mercutio’s tone was lightest it had an outrageously threatening quality that made Tybalt wish he’d waited half an hour longer at his aunt’s.

 

“Because my life has other purpose than to be an aimless complication, now let me by,” saying this, Tybalt advanced until Mercutio stopped him short with a grip on his shoulder so firm and abrupt that it almost spun him around.

 

“And you want simplicity?” there was a smile in Mercutio’s voice and his hand held Tybalt’s hair back on one side. “It’s simple enough: You --”

 

Tybalt’s patience burnt out like the last spark on a fuse, and he pushed past Mercutio before he could whisper whatever he’d been building toward. 

 

“Good night,” said Tybalt, and walked faster.

 

“Until tomorrow,” Mercutio called after him, richly amused.

 


End file.
